


Only That Which They Defend

by july_19th_club



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen, because i do not have the time to write that kind of piece, but i know you guys are sad so here's a lil something, i don't do a ton to the major plot here, im good at epilogues even when the epilogue it's based on is not a very good epilogue, so in this one you got a guy who lives, that's really all there is to it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 14:29:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18896497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/july_19th_club/pseuds/july_19th_club
Summary: A little vignette detailing a slightly different perspective on the events of the Game of Thrones epilogue, featuring Ser Jaime Lannister, who deserved better and who CAN HAVE BETTER. Short n' sweet. Get ur catharsis here.





	Only That Which They Defend

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a post-war vignette for Game o' Thrones, and it only has one purpose: I thought it sucked that some people got unhappy endings, and when I woke up this morning I thought "yo I write I can do something about that." There are a billion of these types of fics gearing up right about now I'm sure, so if that's what ur into and you're getting ready to start a bookmark list full of 'em, this will be a fine addition to the collection.

Jaime lives.

 

He is found by his knight in the rubble, half-crushed and covered in brick dust, twisting away from his sister in her final moments as if trying to get away. Nearby, all that can be seen of the woman who was once almost the most powerful person in the country is one slim hand, reaching. Always reaching - ambition in repose. 

The surgeons inform Brienne that he will likely not last long. Their reasons make sense (a half-ton of masonry will stunt your chances no matter how you slice it) and they make less sense (without his twin, some argue, will he be capable of living on?). But as he has done all his life, he surprises. He recovers. The world is a new and untested thing now: the mad queen of barely days is dead, her killer forsaking roles and responsibilities to leave finally the realm of politics and houses and thrones. Hopefully he has found some measure of peace. Later, Jaime will wish he would have been able to speak to Jon before he left - he, at least, has some experience with the killing of monarchs and the attendant emotions. But by the time he is awake enough to wonder where the northman is, he is gone. His sister Sansa, resolute and practical as ever, takes his place as the Queen in the North. She wears the duty on solemn shoulders, but they are saying she will do well. Her brother Bran, a seer of all people, is taking Snow's place in the south. His only claim to the throne seems to be that most of the other claimants are dead or unwilling to assert themselves, but some folk are saying that perhaps it is better this way. A complete outsider, with no personal stakes in the game, may be able to rebuild where others wouldn't. He is a serious young thing, who spends much of his days quietly giving orders from his chair, which is already like a throne with its high back and its intricate carving. He looks uncomfortable in the Westerosi fashions which have been brought for him, but Brienne notes that he would look uncomfortable in anything.

They are scattering now. The Queen's sister, the assassin, has taken a boat and is packing it full with provisions for a long voyage. There's an old friend of hers who's never seen much of the world, being a blacksmith, and she is recovering from the war by taking him to see how far they can sail without a map. It is a long journey from blood to joy again, but if anyone is qualified to make such a journey and succeed, it is Arya Stark, the death-killer. Jaime's brother, Tyrion, is appointed hand of the king - a position he's held before and is good at and is satisfied with. Jaime notes that he seems a bit uneasy, but he says if that is true, it is only because of the abruptness of their circumstances. He barely knows the boy, and he is used to knowing those he advises well. He has not rested, truly gotten the chance to sit back and make informed decisions at anything less than a breakneck pace, in a long time, and he would not admit it to anyone but his brother, but the calm terrifies him. He has been primed to expect a blow that isn't coming now. 

He and the Queen in the North are putting something together from the bones of their failed marriage. The footing is different now. They are more equals these days, and it is tentative and cautious and it may amount to nothing, but it is respectful, and they both find it a welcome distraction from their duties. Their letters to one another are very long, and no-one else reads them. 

What is left of the armies go their separate ways. The new king commands them to, saying that if he has need of troops again soon he will build his own. No-one is quite sure what he means by this remark and it alarms many, but those few who have survived the indiscriminate cullings of this last, short, brutal, unstrategic war are only glad to be let go. Those from north of the Landing go north, settle near the wall and rejoin the Stark queen. Those from further south pack up their kits and walk down to the dockyards. Teams of builders are slowly assembled. The rubble begins to be cleared. 

Brienne leaves eventually to begin her new position. She is to be chief guard and general to the Queen in the North, and the pride on her face is enough for Jaime when they take their leave of each other. He will join her as soon as he is able, and on that day the road and sky will open up before them, a whole world for the taking. He feels guilty that he did not take it before, that he ran back the way he always did. He worries that if - _she_ \- were still alive, he might still be tempted to abandon things he knew were better in order to satisfy her. But Brienne does not hate him for what he views as a weakness. She says that if a man does nothing but drink brandy for years, the first sip of clear water will disgust him. He will want the old way back. But now the barrel is dry, and there is no other way but forward. He and his brother are the last Lannisters; they are barely a house anymore. He need not keep hold of guilt. 

 

He wonders. He will always wonder. But it will lessen, too. Someday, it will only be a dream, and a bad one at that. So his knight rides north, and he recuperates. His leg is much mangled, but it will work again, eventually - enough to limp on, at any rate. In the meantime he is obliged to make use of a chair, and this is how he and the new king, whose career and long journey he himself catalyzed with one cruel motion many years ago, are reacquainted.

It is also how Bran's first actions as ruler of all Westeros will be chronicled as containing such mundane stuff as wheelchair reform. The ones that currently exist, with their high backs and stiff construction, are not friendly to their users and make self-propulsion a pain. He designs something better, light, small, and made of wicker, and then finds that Jaime cannot get the hang of it and has succeeded only in propelling himself in circles with his one good hand. Privately feeling that this is as good a metaphor as any for the sort of life the man has lived, he agrees to give him lessons in the long, half-rebuilt halls of the old castle. It is an excuse to get out of cabinet meetings, and it has been a long time since he has done something like this; simple physical exercise with no other purpose. These days the things he sees are dimmer and waning the more he focuses on what is in front of him. He is sure that they will reassert themselves, that in order to hold onto his humanity and his place here, in the present, he will have to find anchors. He will have to take them seriously. And at moments in their time together, something in the wounded knight's general manner - his way of talking, perhaps, or his attempts at jokes, when they land, reminds him of his oldest brother, gone now many years, but always at the back of his mind. It is not a surprise to him to find that he is not afraid of Jaime, but it is to Jaime, for whom he occupies rather a large place in his many regrets. Nonetheless he picks up the lessons quickly, soon suggesting that it might be fun to hold a sort of jousting match in one of these halls, that it would help test the new designs' durability, but Bran says he thinks it would be a bad idea. The place is all fifty-foot drops around every corner these days, he says. It would be better to be careful. Wouldn't want anyone to...fall out a window.

Jaime is alarmed. Is the young king threatening him? They are sitting by one of the broken balconies, looking out on the half-killed city, and he pictures his just desserts, the long fall - 

and then the boy laughs. Truly laughs, head tipped back, face flushed with exertion and amusement, and then he takes a look at the flabbergasted expression on Jaime's face and laughs again. He even slaps his knee a little bit. It's a moment before Jaime registers that even when he met him as a boy, he didn't see the new king laugh. It's the biggest display of youth and humanity he's ever seen out of the fellow, and suddenly he too laughs. If these two, broken and repaired, these two whose odds were the worst of the war, can sit on a warm windy day in the Landing and laugh at each other - then what is this world coming to?

And in the end, they live. That is enough. 

**Author's Note:**

> Point of fact, I don't watch GoT religiously or even agnostically, but I do know just an absolute ton about it due to cultural osmosis, the episodes I have enjoyed, and the fact that I like enough of the characters to follow them closely. I didn't do anything about the major plot stuff that happened in this season, because I just did not want to write that long of a piece as I have quite a lot going on rn as it is and other fic writers can no doubt do it better. I also like Bran and I am proud of him. Great job kid. Love ya. The end.


End file.
